I stumbled upon Girl Up in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown. At the time I was about to transition into my 300 level (third year) in Federal University of Technology, Owerri, but life just stalled. I then came across Girl Up’s website through an opportunity platform called Today For Tomorrow Foundation, and as someone deeply drawn to women-led causes, I clicked. That click changed my life.
I started by founding Girl Up Owerri at my university. What began as a small gathering of two or three friends grew into a movement.
We hosted tech training sessions during the pandemic that reached over 500 girls across Nigeria, Ghana, and Rwanda, and we created safe spaces to talk about topics like menstrual hygiene, STEM inclusion, and sexual and reproductive health. Later, my journey expanded beyond my campus walls when I was selected as a Regional Leader for Girl Up Nigeria in 2022-2024. I worked with dozens of club leaders nationwide, fostering collaboration, securing partnerships, and building systems that made it easier for them to succeed.
Together, we organized nationwide initiatives, built a free menstrual health course, and in 2023, and helped bring the first-ever Girl Up Leadership Summit in Nigeria to life, a moment that showed me the power of collective voices.
One of my most transformational experiences came when I was selected alongside other African Regional Leaders for a week-long training in Rwanda in 2022. We learned self-defense and were certified as trainers. Coming back to Nigeria, I immediately cascaded that knowledge by training girls in my community. In a country where one in three women experience gender-based violence, equipping young women with safety skills was more than a program, it was lifesaving work.
Girl Up shaped me into someone who sees change as a daily responsibility. It taught me that leadership isn’t about being the loudest, but about creating systems that allow others to rise.
To be a leader today is to be a builder of opportunity, of space, of community that will outlive you. My hope is that the next 15 years of Girl Up will see even more young women stepping into their power, expanding into new frontiers like technology and climate action, and proving again and again that girls are not just beneficiaries, they are changemakers.
If I could possibly tell my younger self something, I would say: “You don’t have to know it all ahead of time before you start. Do it in fear. Do it in uncertainty. Just start. The confidence will come along the way.”
